by Mary Malloy
I haven’t seen my dear Gianna or Archie in more than forty days and messages are simply cryptic declarations of their safety. Patrick would sneak out of the house to join them if he could, but Col. Hoffman has said that I will pay the price if Patrick is not here anytime a German officer stops to check on his whereabouts. Maybe Patrick is relieved to be out of it, I’m not sure. He might have been a supporter of Badoglio or even a monarchist, but too intimidated by Archie and Gianna’s ardent communism to ever admit that he thought there might be some advantage to supporting the king.
Hoffman has, of course, not come here since the prisoner exchange, and his viciousness toward the partisans in particular, and Italian people in general, just grows over time. I am wondering how Greta, who was such a lovely girl, could have married such a brute.
October 10, 1944
Word has reached us of a horrifying massacre at Marzabotto, about five miles to the south of us. Some say as many as 1000 of the citizens have been massacred by the Germans in retaliation for their support of the Resistance, including many women and children and the five priests in the village. I am very fearful for Gianna and Archie. That area is well known to them both, to Gianna especially as the hills around that town are filled with Etruscan and Roman ruins and Renzo often took the children there when they were young. If anyone could hide there, it would be they, but having no word is terrifying.
10/11/44
I add a quick note to this and will send it to you, that I have heard G & A are well.
The next letter, dated October 13, 1944, was addressed to Thomas Kelliher from Giorgio Faccini, an Archaeology professor at the University of Bologna. “Dear Mr. Kelliher,” it began. “I am a friend of your sister, and of her late husband, and write to tell you what she cannot, the devastating news that her daughter, Gianna, was murdered yesterday. The crime was particularly brutal, which makes the telling of the details extraordinarily painful, but I feel that you must know all, so that you can support your sister with the full knowledge of her suffering, and because the beasts who did this must be known for the full extent of their cruelty.”
I think you know that Gianna and her husband Arcangelo have been active members of the Resistance almost since their marriage. Their politics were no secret in Bologna and though Maggie herself always remained neutral in her speech and actions, there was knowledge that she supported the partisans and their work. Gianna often disguised herself in men’s clothing, and she went frequently to Marzabotto with pamphlets for distribution there. She knew the hills between there and Bologna well, and it is believed that she and A. operated mostly from there, though A. is known to have traveled much farther and he was away when she was captured. She had printed partisan materials with her and could easily have been arrested, quickly tried, and shot or hanged, but she was taken to some location where she was beaten and raped.
The violation of women by German soldiers happens frequently here, but it is a crime about which few people speak. Even in war, with violence so fierce all around us, we let shame keep us from acknowledging the rape of women. Gianna’s body was so broken and bruised that several people tried to prevent Maggie from seeing her, but she would not be kept from taking Gianna up in her arms and carrying her into the courtyard of the house where she sat weeping over that sad corpse for the better part of the day. I was called by Patrizio, whom I’m sure you know is a rather simple creature. He could not comfort his mother, but neither could her daughters, who were also called to come to the house, nor anyone, though your sister has many friends and is much loved for her kindness. In the midst of her anguish, the Nazis came again, demanding that Arcangelo be given to them. The leader of the group was a particularly nasty brute, Col. Franz Hoffman, who has some history with Gianna through his wife. He told Maggie that he had not only witnessed Gianna’s rape, but had participated in it with others. Had the weight of her daughter’s body not kept her from rising instantly she would have done something that might have gotten her killed as well, and I don’t think it would have mattered to her at all.
Arcangelo’s whereabouts are not known, though this attack was aimed to bring him out as much as to punish Gianna for her crimes. I think that the only thing that keeps Maggie conscious of her surroundings now is her fear that he will be captured and killed. I do not think she could survive such a blow and pray that he will not come storming back to kill Hoffman.
I am sorry to be the bearer of such terrible news. I would wish that you could take your sister into your care, but she insists she will not leave Bologna. We hope for liberation from the Allies, but for the present we are very strongly under the thumb of our German occupiers.
There were no more letters from Maggie to her brother, but Roscoe had scanned one last item from the file, an article from the Boston Globe from April 1945, describing the Allies’ entry into Bologna.
Chapter 26
When she had measured the last object on the list, photographed it, and entered the data in her computer, Lizzie stood and walked to where Carmine and Martin were examining the mummy case inch by inch with magnifying lenses.
“I’m done,” she said.
Martin straightened and put his hand on his lower back. “Done for the day? Or done done?”
“I have finished everything that needs to be done in Bologna, and believe that I can do the rest of my research and writing at home. You, of course, still have a mountain of work to do before everything ships,” she said to Carmine.
“Ah, but I’ll have prince Beppe here to help!”
Lizzie laughed and reminded him not to let Justin touch anything.
“We have one more full day here before we leave,” Martin said to Lizzie. “I’d like to meet Patrizio. Can we do that and still have time to see some paintings?”
Lizzie assured him that they could and the next morning they went to the museums and churches where Martin had identified paintings he wanted to see. In the early afternoon they went to the hospital to see Patrizio.
“I don’t know how he’ll respond to meeting you,” Lizzie said to her husband. “I was almost getting to the point where I thought he recognized me some of the time, but his memory is very unpredictable.”
“My curiosity is piqued.”
When they walked into his room Patrizio was sitting up in his chair. He looked up and smiled at Lizzie. “I’m so glad you came back. I was hoping you’d visit me again.”
Lizzie took his hand and squeezed it. “I’m happy to see you again,” she said. When she introduced Martin the old man looked first surprised and then relieved.
He shook Martin’s hand vigorously. “I didn’t know that you had married,” he said to Lizzie. “But I am glad you didn’t spend your life alone.”
Martin gave his wife a look of confusion and she shook her head almost imperceptibly to keep him from saying anything to Patrizio. She had already told him about the frequent confusion between herself and Theresa Kenney.
“I hope you found love too,” Martin said, pulling a chair out and sitting in front of Patrizio. Lizzie sat on the side of the bed.
The old man ran the back of his hand along his jaw and then waved it into the air, as if he took some thought that he would have said and dispersed it instead. He adjusted himself in his seat so that his elbows rested on the arms; he clasped his hands and looked hard at Martin. “I thought I had,” he said, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. “A German girl, a friend of my sister.”
Martin met his eyes but did not say anything.
“I should have married you, Theresa,” Patrizio said. He began to laugh but it turned into coughing and Lizzie put a hand on his shoulder until it stopped. He reached up and patted her hand. “You were a good girl, and I think you liked me.”
“I did,” she said. “I do.”
He thanked her. “That other woman,” he continued softly, “Greta Winkler. She didn’t really like me. It was a ga
me for her and after a summer of flirting she went back to Germany and married an officer named Franz Hoffman. He came here, you know, to Bologna during the war.”
Lizzie and Martin each murmured something about knowing of Hoffman and Patrizio seemed surprised. “How do you know?” he said, a tinge of urgency or fear in his voice.
“Your mother wrote about him in a letter,” Lizzie answered. “That he was in Bologna.”
This seemed to satisfy Patrizio and he nodded. “Of course. It would have been my mother. But how much did she tell you?”
“Only that he was in Bologna and that he had married Gianna’s friend.”
He seemed very frail, his hands like claws as he twisted them around and around each other. “May I tell you what happened?” he asked. “I have never told anyone.”
Lizzie nodded.
“Archie killed Hoffman,” he said abruptly, stopping the motion of his hands and squeezing them tightly together. “Even though the bastard never went anywhere without guards, Archie waited and waited for him, each day lying on a rooftop with a rifle pointed at the Strada Maggiore, knowing he must eventually pass that way. Archie wanted to capture Hoffman and torture him, as he had tortured Gianna—and he didn’t care if he was himself killed in the attempt—but he wanted to be sure that Hoffman died at his hands and thought that this was the only way he could be sure.”
Franz Hoffman had, eventually, driven down that street and Archie received news of it even before the car left the German headquarters. “He was so calm and steady,” Patrizio said. “I was with him that day and I was so nervous and jumpy. He tried to get me to go away, but I wouldn’t, and I was lying beside him as he pulled the trigger that sent the bullet into Hoffman’s heart. It was a beautiful shot,” he said hoarsely. “Right through the window of his car and into his heart. If I hadn’t already believed in the righteousness of retribution, I would have been converted at that moment. We scrambled away and there were partisans all along our path who covered our tracks and protected us. No one was sorry to see Hoffman die.”
“Greta?” Martin said, almost to himself. “I wonder if she was sorry.”
At that, the old man put one hand in front of his eyes and began to cry. “Ah Greta,” he sobbed. “Archie believed that she had informed on Gianna to her husband, even though my mother tried to convince him that it wasn’t so. Mama thought that Greta was also a victim of Hoffman, but Archie wouldn’t have it. When she came here…” His shoulders convulsed as he wept, and the sound, little more than a whimper, was so pitiful that Lizzie and Martin looked at each other anxiously. Finally Lizzie asked him when Greta had returned to Bologna.
“In 1955,” he said. He began to speak rapidly in Italian, gesturing with his hands to indicate directions traveled and at one point made a motion of firing a pistol. Lizzie reached into her bag and turned on the recording function on her cell phone. He spoke in a constant stream for over twenty minutes, while his audience sat frozen at either side, fearing that any motion would break the flow, with consequences that they could not predict. There was finally a point at which he seemed to finish his narrative and then he looked from one of them to the other and nodded. He folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes.
Lizzie and Martin continued to sit motionless for another several minutes, looking at each other, trying to silently communicate their questions about whether they should sneak away or try to speak again to Patrizio. Finally a nurse came in and told them it was time for her patient to return to his bed. He opened his eyes and saw Lizzie.
“Hello,” he said. “I’m so happy you came again to see me. You are from St. Patrick’s College aren’t you?”
She said that she was.
“My grandfather founded St. Pat’s,” he said. “And I was a student there.”
“I know that,” she said. She could not help looking to see if the copy she had brought of Patrick Kelliher, Immigrant Industrialist was still in the room, then thought better of giving it to him again. She leaned down and kissed the old man on the forehead. “And now you are the patriarch of the family,” she said.
“Si,” he said. “Sono il capofamiglia—but Cosimo doesn’t think so.”
The nurse stepped between them just as Lizzie was about to ask Patrick to elaborate and the moment was lost.
“What do you think that was about?” Martin asked as they walked to the car.
“I have no idea whatsoever.”
“And I guess we’ll never know.”
Lizzie admitted that she had recorded the whole of Patrizio’s soliloquy. “When I get it translated, I think we will hear a very interesting story.”
Chapter 27
The last image that Lizzie had of the library at the Gonzaga Palazzo was a startling contrast to the first sight of it. Gone was the alligator, leaving a bare ceiling. The surface of the table was bare—the globes were now in the ballroom being packed for shipping to Boston. Many of the cases were empty. She had replaced the ledgers on the shelf, locked the grate that covered it and slipped the key back into its customary spot at the edge of the shelf.
Patrizio had been sitting here the first time she entered the room, and she couldn’t help thinking with regret of how the old man would feel to see the alteration in his library, his life. He had once called her a thief, and he would certainly do so again if he saw her here now. But she had strong doubts that he would come home. He certainly couldn’t go back to living here with Graziella after everything that had transpired. If he came back to the house he would need more support.
From the library, Lizzie went into the ballroom and here her regrets turned to excitement. The collection would be a sensation in Boston, she had no doubt of that. She said good-bye to Carmine, with the hope that he would be able to come see the exhibit soon after its installation and they had a last word about the management of Justin when he arrived in a few months.
It was strange to enter the familiar library of St. Patrick’s College the next day. Lizzie was still drowsy from the overnight flight, but she could not wait to bring Jackie and her assistants up to date on the work she had done in Bologna. Now that the object list was finalized, the work turned to researching each object and writing the catalog.
Justin wasn’t clear exactly why he was still expected to go to Bologna, and Lizzie wasn’t either, but off he went at the end of April to meet Carmine and be lectured by his uncle. Lizzie did not, of course, trust him to have anything to do with the packing and shipping of the collection. Carmine would supervise the packing and a fine arts shipping firm had been hired to help. They had already devised a system for marking each object and the crate in which it would be shipped. Lizzie gave Justin a copy of the master list, with instructions to mark off each object when it left the house.
A few weeks later she went to Logan Airport to meet the Al Italia flight with Father O’Toole, her interns, the exhibit designer, and the College’s attorney, who had completed the customs paperwork. The Italian consul to Boston met them there and greeted Father O’Toole with an embrace of arms and kisses on both cheeks.
It had been necessary to have declarations for each piece, along with licenses from the Italian government to remove works of art with significant cultural value, even for a loan exhibition, as well as paperwork saying that the items would be returned, that none would be confiscated while in the U.S.
The campus museum had undergone extensive renovations to receive the valuable Gonzaga collections. The galleries had been upgraded with new temperature and humidity controls, and a state-of-the-art security system had been installed. When the collection arrived, each crate was removed from the truck to the loading dock and the bar codes applied by Carmine and the shipping company were scanned. Crate after crate was moved into the exhibit staging area and opened; the more fragile objects would rest in their crates for a few days to adjust to the conditions in the museum. The photographer, who would take the pic
tures that would appear in the catalog, pestered Lizzie with questions about which objects would need to appear in color and which in black and white, and began to set up a place to do his work at one end of the staging area.
It was a few days before everything had been placed on tables in the staging area and Lizzie finally found herself alone with the collection after a long day of work. She had not yet had a chance to be able to contemplate the artifacts in their new surroundings and it was still strange to see the alligator, the giant marble foot, the narwhal tusk and the Marquesan club here.
“Everything okay here, Prof. Manning?”
She jumped when the security guard spoke. “Yes thanks,” she said. “I’m going to stay and work for an hour or so more.”
When the guard left she went from object to object. In the flurry of activity surrounding the unpacking of the crates it was impossible to ponder the exquisite character of individual works, but now she moved very slowly along the table on which the things had been laid out. The three reliquaries stood together at one long end of the first table. There was the magnificent Reni portrait of the Madonna and the dell’Arca angel, which had been moved here from the chapel. Beside them the Draco dandinii smiled upon his perch, and the eel looked out from its watery jar. She had chosen five Chinese vases in different sizes, but all with blue and white designs, and they were placed rather randomly in and among the two large globes, various skeletons, and bronze figures and containers large and small.